Events

2023-2024

All seminars will be hybrid, unless otherwise stated. For information, email Carlos Machado ([email protected]) or Ann-Sophie Schoess ([email protected]).

22 January (Monday) – Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield), Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Weiting between Rome and Constantinople (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

31 January (Wednesday) – Giacomo Savani (St Andrews), Machines for Competition? Reassessing Rural Baths in Late Roman Britain (CLAS seminar), online, 4pm

05 February (Monday) – Jamie Wood (Lincoln), Lost Texts and Careless Readers in Visigothic Iberia (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

08 February (Thursday) – Neil McGuigan (St Andrews), Scottish Kings and the Old English Past (Medieval Studies Seminar), Old Class Library, 5.30pm

14 February (Friday) – Panayotis Christophorou (Oxford), Perceptions of Early Roman Emperors in Pseudo-Hegesippus (CLAS Seminar), Swallowgate, S03, 4.00 pm

19 February (Monday) – Sam Leggett (Edinburgh), The Norse and the North Atlantic: fishing and migration in early medieval Scotland (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

4 March (Monday) – Walter Pohl (Vienna), Where Rome really fell: the lands along the Danube in the fourth to seventh centuries (SAIMS Annual Lecture), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

8 March (Friday) – Anna Kelley (St Andrews), Violence and social bonds in late antique Egypt: women as victims, perpetrators, and adjudicators (Classics Research Seminar) , Swallowgate, S03, 4.15 pm

11 March (Monday) – Conor O’Brien (Oxford), The Rise of Christian Kingship and the Desecularization of the Latin West (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

20 March (Wednesday) – Larisa Ficulle (Vienna), Leaves of rue, Bayberries and Myrrh: Theory and Practice of Abortion in Byzantium (Classics Research Seminar), venue TBC, 4.00 pm

25 March (Monday) – Holger Zellentin (Tübingen), Jesus’ Confirmation of the Torah in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Medieval Studies Seminar, joint with ILCR), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

5 April (Friday) – Neil McLynn (Oxford), Lost at Leuchars: Gregory Nazianzen at Sasina (Annual Lecture, Centre for Late Antique Studies /Classics Research Seminar) , Swallowgate, S03, 4.15 pm

Previous events

2023-2024

15 September (Friday), all day – School II
Workshop: Trees and the Anthropocene in Greek and Roman Antiquity
hosted by the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies

5 October (Thursday), 12noon – 1pm – Medieval History, Undercroft
** Late Antique Lunch**
(Please email Caroline Humfress at [email protected] by 2nd October to confirm attendance and please mention if you have any special dietary requirement)

11 October (Wednesday), 2.15pm – School of Classics, Swallowgate 3
Christian Djurslev (Aarhus), How the Christians Stole the Past: Greek Chronology and Roman History in Theophilus of Antioch’s Ad Autolycum (Classics Seminar)

23 October (Monday), 5.15 pm – School of History, Old Class Library
Harry Munt (York), Imperial Holy Cities in Islamic Late Antiquity (Medieval Studies and Middle Eastern and Iranian Seminar)

27 October (Friday), 4.00 pm – online only
Panayotis Christophorou (Oxford), Perceptions of Early Roman Emperors in Pseudo-Hegesippus

30 October (Monday), 5.15 pm – Parliament Hall
Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield), Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Writing Between Rome and Constantinople (Medieval Studies Seminar)

01 November (Wednesday), 4.00pm – online only
Rocco Selvaggi (Hamburg) Vandals, Suebi, Visigoths: three different ways of Roman diplomacy to deal with ‘barbarians’

06 November (Monday), 5.15 pm – Parliament Hall
Matthew Gabriele (Virginia Tech), Prophecy, Apocalypse, and Making History in Early Medieval Europe (Medieval Studies, The Bullough Lecture)

10 November  (Friday), 4.00 pm – online only
Marzia Fiorentini (St Andrews), “Typhos the Tyrant”

17 November (Friday), 4.15pm– School of Classics, Swallowgate 3
Christian Laes (Manchester), Disability and the Disabled in the Roman Empire: A Social and Cultural History (Classics Seminar)

2022-2023 

3 October (Monday), 5.15pm – Dr Tim Greenwood (St Andrews): 
“Remembering Saint Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia in late antiquity” 
(St Andrews Medieval Studies Seminar Series)
This seminar will take place in person in Parliament Hall and will be available on Microsoft Teams

11 November (Friday), 4pm – Prof. Ignazio Tantillo (Naples):
“The Consistory of the Late Roman Emperors”
(Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies/St Andrews Classics Research Seminar)
This seminar will take place in person in School II, St Salvator’s Quad, and will be available on Microsoft Teams

23 November (Wednesday), 4pm – Dr Grace Stafford (Warsaw): 
“Pray for the Patron: Female Donor Portraits and Women’s Patronage in Late Antiquity” 
(St Andrews Late Antique Seminar)
This seminar will be available on Microsoft Teams only

30 January  5.15pm: Arietta Papaconstantinou (Reading), “Negotiating eternity: monks, aristocrats, and phantoms” (Old Class Library and online) Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research Seminar joint with St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies

01 February 4.00pm: Rocco Selvaggi (Hamburg): Western Roman Diplomacy as reflected in Roman-Germanic agreements of 5th century (online)

03 February  4.15 pm: Kyle Harper (Oklahoma): The Long First Plague Pandemic: A View from Italy (Annual Lecture for the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies) (in-person) (School II)*

15 February   4.00pm: Giacomo Savani (St Andrews) Machines for Competition? Reassessing Rural Baths in Late Roman Britain (online)

10 March 4.15 pm: James Corke-Webster (KCL): Legislation, Charges and Christians: Problems and Solutions (School of Classics, room S03) 

15 March 4.00pm: Anna Kelley (St Andrews) Weaving the Glory of God: Monastic Commercial Production in the Late Antique Textile Industry (online)

21 March 5.15pm: Lisa Eberle (Tübingen), “Law, Narrative, and Entitlement in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE – 100 CE” (venue TBC) Joint ILCR, School of History and School of Classics Lecture

23 March Masterclass with Lisa Eberle (Tübingen), “Beyond Boring: Letters of Recommendation as Sources for (Legal) Historians” (time and place TBC)

29 March 4.00pm Robert Wisniewski (Warsaw/Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Reading): Clerical look. How did clerics start to differ from lay people?(School of Classics, room S03)


Workshop

New Approaches to the History of Plague in Late Antiquity

Hosted by the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies
and the Centre for Late Antique Studies

Friday 3 February 2023


2021-2022 

Wednesday 29 September 4pm – Cristina La Rocca (Padua):
“Paupercula. A woman alone between poverty, disability, and redemption (6th-9th centuries) (Poverty and Inequality series)”

Wednesday 13 October 4pm – Ann-Sophie Schoess (St Andrews):
“Ariadne’s Second Abandonment: Traces of Ovid’s Fasti in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca?”

Wednesday 3 November 4pm – Jane Sancinito (Lowell):
“Finding Piracy in Late Antiquity” (Poverty and Inequality series)

Wednesday 10 November 4pm – John Fabiano (Toronto):
“Plebeius Labor: Work, Profession, and Poverty in the Late-Roman City” (Poverty and Inequality series)

Wednesday 24 November 4pm – Christel Freu (Rouen):
“Contrasts and Inequalities in the societies of the capitals of Byzantine Egypt: the cases of Antinoopolis and Oxyrhynchos” (Poverty and Inequality series)

6 April (Wednesday), 4.00 pm – Kim Bowes (Pennsylvania)
Portfolios of the poor: Household economics in the Roman and late Roman worlds (CLAS Poverty and Inequality Series)

8 April (Friday), 4.00 pm – Philipp von Rummel (Berlin)
Simitthus in the first millennium AD. The multiple transformations of a Roman town in Africa (Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies/School of Classics)

13 April (Wednesday), 5.00 pm – Daniel Caner (Indiana)
An Early Byzantine Notion of the Deserving Poor (CLAS Poverty and Inequality Series)


Lived Spaces in Late Antiquity
Conference, 8 – 10 December, 2021

This international conference will approach the world of Late Antiquity from the perspective of space, how it was perceived, defined, and constructed through social, political, and cultural interactions. Space is the fundamental dimension of social life, the arena where it unfolds and the stage where social values and hierarchies are represented; analysis of space allows us to understand history through different means of shaping, occupying, controlling space. Space-oriented approaches have had a remarkable impact on late antique scholarship, leading to exciting new evaluations of changes in architecture and topography As such, traditional debates over the nature and dimension of urban and rural settlements are being left aside in favour of a more organic perspective that combines historical and archaeological analyses to show how elements of continuity and change were articulated in new and creative ways in different parts of the Mediterranean. This conference brings together specialists from different disciplines to look at space as a lived entity, as how it was used and how it gave shape to social life at a time of unprecedented historical change. Topics to be examined include the fate of Classical structures; the development of funerary spaces; the conceptual redefinition of space; and how religious and secular foundations redefined social life.

This will be an online event that will be transmitted via Microsoft Teams. To register, please e-mail [email protected] by Monday 6 December.

View updated conference program (pdf)

This conference is generously sponsored by the School of Classics at St Andrews, the Classical Association, and the Institute of Classical Studies.


7 February (Monday), 5.15pm – Mathieu Tillie (Paris)
Dating the Hadith. Methodological reflections on the emergence of prophetic authority in early Islam (SAIMS/ILCR seminar)

11 February (Friday), 4.00 pm – Corisande Fenwick (London)
Building God’s empire: archaeology, religion and the Byzantine reconquest of Africa Classics (School of Classics seminar)

16 February (Wednesday), 4.00 pm – Uiran Gebara da Silva (Pernambuco)
Late Roman Rural Communities and Scale: the Colonate as Micro-Spatial History (CLAS Poverty and Inequality Series)

18 February (Friday), 4.00 pm – James Corke-Webster (London)
By whom were (the) early Christians persecuted? (School of Classics seminar)

30 March (Wednesday), 4.00 pm – Alexandra Madela (St Andrews)
Competing with Homer in Late Antiquity: Poetic ambitions of the Orphic Argonautica’s anonymous author (CLAS)


2020-2021 

Wednesday 27 January 4pm – Dr Byron Waldron (Sydney):
“Brothers in Arms: Military Politics, Fraternal Imagery and the Age of the Tetrarchy”

Friday 5 February 4pm – Adrastos Omissi (Glasgow):
“Hamstrung Horses: Dating Constantine’s Departure from the Court of Galerius” (Classics Research seminar)

Monday 8 February 5.15pm – Søren Sindbaek (Aarhus):
“Northern Emporium: The Archaeology of Ribe, the Anglo-Saxon Mission in Frisia, and the Making of Viking-Age” (Institute of Medieval Studies Seminar)

Wednesday 03 March 4pm – Prof. Marcelo Cândido da Silva (São Paulo):
“Karol and Sisenand: power and social mobility in early medieval Italy”

Friday 12 March 4pm – Kristina Sessa (Ohio State):
“Disaster in Late Antiquity: Scale, Agency, and Narrative”- Centre for Late Antique Studies Annual Lecture

Wednesday 17 March 4pm – Dr Robert Wisniewski (Warsaw):
“Counting Prebyters in Late Antique Rome”

Friday 19 March 4pm – Koen de Temmerman (Ghent):
“A Life (not) to Die for: Eremitic Monasticism in Pseudo-Nilus’ Narrations” (Classics Research Seminar)

Wednesday 21 April 4pm – Prof. Sabine Panzram (Hamburg):
“The Christianization of the Iberian Peninsula – Myth and Reality”

2018-2019

(See also the page with information about our work-in-progress seminar series for other exciting lectures)

Semester 2

* Workshop: Epigraphy and Literature in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Week 6 – 04/03 (Monday) – St Mary’s College Hall
Invited speakers: Gianfranco Agosti (Rome, La Sapienza), Jason König (St Andrews), Peter Kruschwitz (Reading), Carlos Machado (St Andrews), Elisa Merisio (Rome, La Sapienza), Jason Moralee (Massachussetts Amherst), Silvia Orlandi (Rome, La Sapienza), Beppe Pezzini (St Andrews) Andreas Rhoby (Vienna), Francesco Stella (Siena), Ida Toth (Oxford).

A University of St Andrews/Università di Roma La Sapienza workshop, funded by The British Academy.

* Jason Moralee (Massachussetts Amherst), ‘Love, Hatred, and Madness: The Emotional Lives of the Capitolium’ (a joint lecture for the Centre for Late antique Studies and the Centre for Landscape Studies)
Week 6 – 05/03 (Tuesday), 5pm – School of Classics, S11

Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner (Tübingen), ‘Quoddam sacerdotium: the Mysteries of the State and the Self-perceptions of the late Roman bureaucratic elite’ (annual lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies)
Week 8 – 03/04 (Wednesday), 2pm – Arts seminar room 7

* Bryan Ward-Perkins (Oxford), ‘Archaeology and the end of Antiquity’ (The Student Archaeological Society of St Andrews)
Week 8 – 05/04 (Friday), 5pm – School V

* Tim Greenwood (History), ‘Armenia and Iran in Late Antiquity: New Perspectives’ (a seminar of the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies)
Week 9 – 08/04 (Monday), 1pm – Parliament Hall, South Street

* Jan Willem Drijvers (Groningen), ‘The forgotten emperor Jovian (363-364) between history and legend’
Week 9 – 09/04 (Tuesday), 5pm – School of Classics, S11

* Julia Hillner (Sheffield), ‘Helena Augusta: Writing a Life Forward’
Week 10 – 19/04 (Friday) 4pm – School of Classics, S11

* Bruce Frier (Michigan), ‘What held Roman law together?’ (Joint meeting of the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research, University of St Andrews and the Edinburgh Roman Law Group.)
10 May (Friday) – Old Class Library, 71 South Street

* St Andrews/Tübingen Workshop: The First Millenium AD
A two-day interdisciplinary workshop for graduate students and early career researchers sponsored by St Leonard’s College, St Andrews.
Thursday 23-Friday 24 May 2019

Venue: Lecture room 2, The Gateway, North Haugh

PROGRAMME

Thursday, 23 May

09.00 – Arrival and welcome

09.15-10.45 – Panel 1 (Chair: Jason König)

* Georgios Mouratidis (St Andrews): Grants of citizenship and boule-membership to successful performers during the Empire

* Theresia Raum (Tübingen): There and back again: Herakleios and the Survival of the Eastern Roman Empire, 610-630

* Carolyn La Rocco (St Andrews): Some material evidence for inter-religious interaction on the late antique Iberian Peninsula

10.45-11.15 – Coffee break

11.15-13.15 – Panel 2 (Chair: Tim Greenwood)

* Gabriel Gabbardo (St Andrews): Pigs and Nuns – A Julianic Anti-Christian persecution?

* Maurits De Leeuw (Tübingen): Beyond the bold bishop and the angry empress: Opposition against John Chrysostom

* Federico Montinaro (Tübingen): Abbasid Syria in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869/870

* Ian D. Morris (St Andrews): A pillow of figs: Late Antique ‘sleeper’ legends in Early Muslim exegesis

13.15-14.30 – Lunch

14.30-15.00 – Research at Tübingen

15.00-16.30 – Panel 3 (Chair: Roger Rees)

* Dennis Jussen (Radbout/St Andrews): The Collection and its Collective: Pliny, Pacatus, and the Panegyrici Latini

* Andreas Abele (Tübingen): Reading the ‚Dullest Epistles in the Latin Language’ by the Book. A Narratological Approach to the Letters of Symmachus

* Maria Merino (St Andrews): Riddles and Praise: A Poetic Epistle to Charlemagne

16.30-17.00: Coffee break

17.00-18.30: Plenary lecture

Prof. Mischa Meier (Tübingen): The Roman Context of Early Islam

Friday, 24 May

09.00-11.00 – Panel 4 (Chair: TJ Lang)

* Francis Rouvinez (St Andrews): The Gospel of Mark in the Context of Ancient Biography

* Martina Vercesi (St Andrews): Quale regnum exinde iustorum! Qualis civitas nova Hierusalem!: Revelation 19 – 21 in the exegesis of the Christian communities of Roman Africa from the II to the V century.

* David De Marco (Tübingen): Augustine’s presentation of Porphyry in De ciuitate Dei 10

* Hiu Ki Chan (St Andrews): Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s Theology of Virginity in De Virginitate

11.00-11.30 – Coffee Break

11.30-13.00 – Panel 5 (Chair: Rebecca Sweetman)

* Marzia Fiorentini (St Andrews/Sapienza): Liberalitas in the 4th century: a rhetorical analysis

* Sarah Bühler (Tübingen): Ordo renascens: Coping strategies of the imperial élites in Italy, 395-493 CE

* Caroline Belanger (Tübingen/St Andrews): The Right to Roman Hegemony: Virtue and Empire in Avienus’ Descriptio

 13.00-14.30 – Lunch

14.30-15.00: Research at St Andrews

15.00-16.30 – Panel 6 (Chair: Caroline Humfress)

* Paolo Tedesco (Tübingen): The Political Economy of the Late Roman Empire: An Essay in Speculation

* Cameron Houston (St Andrews): The Politics of Ethnic and Spatial Discourses Concerning Late- and Post-Carolingian Lotharingia

* Luise Nöllemeyer (Tübingen): Provence Around 900: Modern and Medieval Narratives

16.30-17.00 – Coffee Break

17.00-18.30 – Plenary Lecture

Prof. Jill Harries (St Andrews): Pliny’s Private State

This interdisciplinary workshop is generously sponsored by St Leonard’s Doctoral and Postgraduate College, St Andrews, with the support of the School of Classics, the School of History, and the University of Tübingen.

Semester 1

* Week 1 – Wednesday 19 September – 2.05pm School I, St Salvator’s

Michael Hanaghan (Cork) ‘Praise, Blame, and Roman Emperors: A Visual Study of Constantius II in Epideictic Literature’

* Week 2 – Wednesday 26 September – 2.05pm Arts 7, The Scores

Lenia Kouneni (St Andrews) ‘From spiritual visions to archaeological digs: David Russell and The Walker Trust excavations of the Great Palace in Constantinople’

* Friday 12 October – 4.10pm Swallowgate 11

Gianfranco Agosti (La Sapienza) ‘The Dark Side of the Nile. Greek and Coptic Paideia in Late Antiquity’

Past events:

2017-2018

Semester 2

Week 2 – 09/02 (Friday), 4pm – School of Classics, S11
Richard Marshall (Glasgow): ‘Themistius reads Suetonius’

Week 3 – 14/02 (Wednesday), 2pm – School of Classics, S11
Rebecca Usherwood (St Andrews): ‘Becoming an Emeritus Emperor: definition, communication, and confusion’

Week 4 – 21/02 (Wednesday), 11.15am – St Mary’s College Hall
Brendan Wolfe (St Andrews): ‘What does the study of the Goths contribute to theology?’

Week 4 – 21/02 (Wednesday), 2pm – School of Classics, S11
Silvia Orlandi (Rome): ‘Speeches on stone: a roadmap towards Late Antiquity through epigraphy’ – Annual lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies

Week 5 – 28/02 (Wednesday), 11.15am – St Mary’s College Hall
Gabrielle Thomas (Durham): “‘Vulnerable, Yet Divine’: Retrieving Gregory Nazianzen’s Account of the Imago Dei”

 Week 6 – 07/03 (Wednesday), 11.15am – St Mary’s College Hall
Crystal Addey (Glasgow/St Andrews): ‘Oracles of Fire: The Formation and Reception of the Chaldean Oracles’

Week 6 – 07/03 (Wednesday), 2pm – School of Classics, S11
Silke Diederich (Cologne): ‘A Commentary on the Tabula Peutingeriana

2017-2018

Semester 1

Week 1 – 18/09/2017, 5:15pm – Old Class Library, St John’s House
Alex Woolf (St Andrews): ‘Ethnicity and Ethnic Replacement in the Early Insular World’

Week 2 – 29/09/2017, 4:05pm – Room S11, School of Classics
Kim Czajkowski (Edinburgh): ‘Law and Administration at the Edges of the Empire: the Case of Dura Europus’

Week 4 – 09/10/2017, 5:15pm – Old Class Library, St John’s House
Janneke Raaijmakers (Utrecht): ‘Material for thought: relic veneration in the earlier Middle Ages. Devotion, reflection and doubt’

Week 8 – 06/11/2017, 5:15pm – Old Class Library, St John’s House
Janet Coleman: ‘Reflections on the Self Itself: in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and what happened next?’

2016-2017

Semester 1

Week 6, 17th October, 5:15pm:
Middle Persian court records from Tabarestãn: Recent Evidence on Legal Proceedings in Eighth-Century Iran. 
Professor Maria Macuch (Freie Universität, Berlin)
Old class library, St John’s House, South Street.
Organised jointly by Institute for Medieval Studies and Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research.

Week 6, 18th October, 2pm:
Legal Constructions of Consanguinity: Succession in Sasanian Iran
Professor Maria Macuch (Freie Universität, Berlin)
New Seminar Room, St John’s House, South Street.

Week 7, 28th October, 4pm:
The Byzantium that could have been? Learning and the Transmission of Classical Texts in the Ninth Century. 
Professor Niels Gaul (Edinburgh)
School II, St Salvator’s Quad

Week 9, 11 November, 4pm:
The lives of the Justinian Code from Constantinople to Cambridge
Dr Simon Corcoran (Newcastle)
School II, St Salvator’s Quad

Week 10, 18 November, 4pm:
Landscape approaches and settlement archaeology in post-Roman central Greece
Dr Athanasios Vionis (Cyprus)
School II, St Salvator’s Quad
Annual Lecture for the Centre for Landscape Studies

Semester 2

Week 1, 27th January, 4:05 pm:
Christianization and the Dynamics of Patronage in Late Antiquity – From Conflicts to Everyday Nuisances?
Maijastina Kahlos (Helsinki)
School I, St. Salvator’s Quad

Week 2, 30th January, 5:15pm:
Infamy and Exclusion in Late Antiquity (Roman and Early Canon Law)
Lorena Atzeri (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Old Class Library, St Johns House, South Street
(Organized by the Institute of Medieval Studies and the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research)

Week 4, 13 February, 5:15pm:
Xenodochia and Public Health in Merovingian Francia
Prof. Peregrine Hordern (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Old Class Library, St Johns House, South Street

Week 10, 14th April, 4:05pm:
Elite Contestations and the Crisis of 455
Professor Michele Salzman (University of California, Riverside)
School I, ST. Salvator’s Quad
Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies

Week 11, 21st April, 4:05pm:
Landscapes of the Roman Poor
Kim Bowes (University of Pennsylvania/American Academy in Rome)
School I, St. Salvator’s Quad

Workshop

2015-2016

Seminars and lectures

Conferences and calls for papers

Late Antique Reading Group

All are welcome at a new reading group for primary and secondary sources on Late Antiquity, hosted by the School of Divinity, meeting at 4pm on Tuesdays at the Byre, beginning on the 13th of October with discussion of S. Elm’s ‘Sons of Hellenism’, available as an e-book through the Library.

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